


Five Superpowers David Villa Wished He Had

by nahco3



Category: Football RPF, Iron Man (Movies), Spider-Man (Comicverse)
Genre: 5 Things, Crossover, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-08-29
Updated: 2011-08-29
Packaged: 2017-10-23 05:40:04
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,779
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/246834
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/nahco3/pseuds/nahco3
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Five superpowers David Villa wished he had.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Five Superpowers David Villa Wished He Had

**Author's Note:**

> written in 2009 and posted at my lj.
> 
> This is an AU/crossover type thing, incorporating elements of Iron Man movieverse and old school Spider-Man comics, although no knowledge of either is required. Thanks to pippopippo for the prompt.

1.

David's feet hang down over the edge of the kitchen chair, and he kicks the air, aimlessly. "When's Dad coming home?"

"When he can. Stay still, David!" His mother's hand is rough as she scrubs dirt off his face. He squirms away from her. "David, stop that!"

"It's not like the doctor's gonna look at my face anyway," he mumbles, under his breath. His mother stops her scrubbing and grips his shoulders.

"David, this doctor is important. He...he might be able to make your leg better. Wouldn't you like to play football like the other boys?"

David looks out the window at the high blue sky. "Where's Dad?"

"He's at the mine. David!" She resumes washing his face, he resumes wiggling.

"Why?" A bird flies by, singing.

"Why what?"

"Why is he never home?"

"He has to work, honey." David slumps in the chair, resigned.

She brushes her hair out of her eye with the heel of her hand and checks her watch. "We need to go now. Come on, sweetie." She lifts him out the the chair and hands him his crutches, helps him reattach his leg brace. She walks beside him as he limps to the car.

She helps his put on his fraying seat belt and shuts the door. He leans his head against the window, watches the world wheel by, and wishes he could fly.

2.

The treatments don't work, not really. He stops wearing a brace, but still limps and needs a cane. At some point his mother stops trying, loses her faith in doctors and turns to the Virgin, diligently praying for a miracle. His father ages quickly and silently, works himself to a coal-dark shadow. He comes home late and leaves early, dusty and coughing, lays a hand on David's back as David does his school work.

David realizes later that his father is glad about the accident. The mines don't want crippled workers, and as his mother begs for a miracle (Dear Lord, help David walk, let him be normal, oh Lord) his father remains silent, stares at his hands.

The other boys aren't particularly nice, but David learns not to mind. He doesn't have many friends, can't play football, can't keep up, can't dance. He's angry, but quietly so, doesn't loose his temper so much as smolder. He tells himself he's too good for this hick town. He wishes sometimes he were really different - not a cripple, deformed and weaker, but something stronger. He reads about mutants in the newspaper, a species apart, Homo superior. Maybe he wouldn't mind being alone so much if he were one of them.

3.

Rain soaks the street black and dyes the city gray. David stands close enough to the curb to flag down a cab, but (hopefully) far enough from it to avoid being splashed, his umbrella in one hand, cane and briefcase in the other, a newspaper tucked under one arm. "Spider-Man, Menace?" the headline screams. He bought the copy of the Daily Bugle to read on the train back from New Jersey, if only because reading it required no mental effort.

"Excuse me?" someone says, in accented English. "Excuse me, but could I share your umbrella?"

He turns his head only slightly, a year of living in New York has conditioned him in the art of deliberate avoidance. A young man stands next to him, drenched and shivering. Seeing David looking at him, he smiles meekly. David gestures him over impatiently, then immediately regrets the impulse.

He comes to stand under the umbrella, his wet shoulder brushing against David's slightly. "Thanks," he says. "I guess that I forgot mine on the train."

David debates ignoring him, but figures it's too late at this point. "Are you Spanish?"

The other man pauses briefly, then nods. "From the Canary Islands. I'm studying at Columbia. Are you? Spanish, I mean." He turns his head to face David.

"Yes." A cab pulls up. "Do you need a ride back to campus?"

"No, well, yes, but you don't have to..." David pulls the man toward the cab, ignoring his protests.

"You didn't have to that, really, sir" he says, once they're in the cab.

David rolls his eyes. "You were already soaked. And don't call me sir."

"Then what should I call you?" He looks at David with wide brown eyes, almost flirting.

"David."

"Me too. David Silva." He turns to offer his hand to David, so David shakes it.

Things go on from there, advancing haphazardly but surely - coffee to warm up, David helping Silva with an econ paper, going to see a movie with a quick drink afterward, kissing on street corners and in doorways, Silva spending the night in David's almost sterile apartment and forgetting his cell phone, meeting Silva's parents at graduation, lugging boxes of clothes and books into David's apartment and collapsing on his couch.

The only thing David wishes for as he lies in bed, Silva's skin hot against his own, is to hold on to time, to catch each minute and extend it into a year.

4.

This is what David remembers:

It's a Saturday morning in April, the weather just softened out of winter. They are walking to Central Park, David's left hand is holding Silva's right hand, and his own right hand is holding his cane. Silva is laughing, his head thrown back, and if David were to run his hand through Silva's hair, it would have been soft. David is smiling, his eyes are as bright as Silva's, although he does not know it.

Overhead, there's a crash, and they both crane their necks upward. Several stories up, a window is broken, and some of the glass crunches on the sidewalk. David sees a flash of red and gold.

"It's Iron Man!" someone calls. Some people boo, some people pull out their cell phones, some people cheer. Most people, David included, try to cross to the other side of the street.

"You think he's ok?" Silva asks, looking back over his shoulder. "He got thrown pretty hard."

David shrugs, indifferent on this point. He's annoyed Silva has stopped laughing, so to make himself feel better he pulls Silva toward him and kisses the corner of his mouth.

Someone, or something, lands in the middle of the street, with a loud thud. People run screaming. A figure in black unfolds itself. It's yelling taunts in a mechanized voice at Iron Man, who has swung down to trade punches with it.

Silva is running, but turns to look back for David, who is following as quickly as he can. His hair is blown across his face.

This is when David's memories begin to get confused.

He knows from police reports that the black figure is actually a brilliant physicist who lost his job at Stark Enterprises, went crazy, and built himself some kind of battle armor. He reads that the man, his name is Arthur Sampson, tries to go after Tony Stark, to get revenge. Somehow they end up in Lower Manhattan, throwing each other off buildings, trading energy blasts.

SHIELD agents closing in, Sampson gets scared and decides to take a hostage. David knows this from the cell phone footage he's studied.

When he grabs Silva, David's heart stops. Sampson tells the SHIELD agents to leave, says this is between me and Stark, get away now or the kid gets it.

They don't, and Silva's kicking in the air, scared, and David can't do anything, can barely fucking walk, let alone run to his rescue.

Sampson crushes Silva's throat with one metal hand. There isn't any blood.

He doesn't know what happens after that, he's crying to hard to see or to remember.

A few days later, after the funeral, he gets a call from Tony Stark.

"I'm sorry, David," he says. David doesn't ask how he got the number, how he knows his name. He doesn't care. He doesn't care about anything other than the fact that this fucking hurts and isn't ever going to stop.

"Yeah," David replies, because there isn't anything else to say.

"Is there anything I can do?" Tony Stark asks him.

"Yes," David says. "I want to be able to fight."

5.

There are always lights on, shining fluorescent and unforgiving, and monitors beeping, making it nearly impossible to sleep. David hates hospitals, and hates this not-quite-hospital, too. He could leave at any time, rip out the IVs and walk out the door, but he stays.

The doctors give him injections, make observations, administer electric shocks. At first, he simply accepted the pain and ignored their explanations. Now, he's impatient. He wants them to be done. He wants to leave.

Stark didn't want to give him to these people, government scientists eager for a willing test subject, but David persisted. Now, he's fairly sure Stark was right about them, but he doesn't care. He only needs them for a few more hours, a few more injections. They have an agenda, he's sure, but so does he. And it's his body they've spent millions of dollars and the better part of a year perfecting.

One of the doctors comes in. "Mr. Villa?"

David ignores him.

The doctor continues. "The most recent batches of tests have come back positive. We're quite impressed with the effects of the serum. We'll keep you a few more days in order to draw the necessary blood to duplicate it for other patients, and then you will be released to back to SHIELD." He makes note of David's blood pressure and leaves.

David stands up and carefully pulls out the various tubes that have been stuck in him. He pulls on a pair of pants, left over from the last time the orderlies let him walk outside.

There's an ventilation duct in the ceiling above his bed. He stands on on his bed now and pushes aside the grate, then pulls himself up and inside. He starts to crawl. The duct joins with others,splits and diverges, but David knows where he's going, and follows the dark and twisting path to an end.

He finds a dull puddle of light, and carefully reaches outward to remove the grate. It's a short drop to the ground, and he's free, dim clouds above him, rough pavement pressing on his feet. The world is wider than he remembers, emptier, too. He's cold, but it doesn't matter. He breaks into a careful run, like a hunter, deadly and dark.

"I'm going to kill you," he says, to himself, trying out the phrase and finding he likes it. He smiles his knife blade smile and wishes for everything he can't have.

**Author's Note:**

> 1\. David Villa broke his right leg when he was four, and was nearly left with a permanent limp. His father worked in a coal mine, his family was very poor.
> 
> 2\. In Marvel canon, the scientific classification for a mutant is Homo superior.
> 
> 3\. The Daily Bugle is a slightly trashy New York newspaper whose publisher hates Spider-Man.
> 
> 4\. SHIELD is a law-enforcement agency that often deals with superheroes and villains. It's implied that after the events on the Iron Man movie, Tony Stark will be working with them.
> 
> 5\. This is a loose reference to the Super Soldier Serum, which elevates the user to the "peak of human perfection." It has been known to have nasty side effects.


End file.
